I have reviewed your documents and you need to make the following changes. 1. All margins must be set at 1.6 for the left and 1.1 for all others. The preliminary section is currently at 2.25" and the main text is about 1.75". 2. Change the heading on the List of Illistrations to LIST OF FIGURES 3. Fix the widow on pg xxv 4. remove the page break on pg 222 continue the archival documents cites directly after the end of the bibliography section. Make the above corrections and resubmit.

DSpace: Submission Rejected Fri Dec 23, 2005

To collection: Theses and Dissertations (CLOSED)

Your submission has been rejected with the following explanation:

I have reviewed your lateest draft and you need to correct the following: 1. 24 pt space the title on the title page. 2. In the preliminary section you have 2 pg xxii's. 3. In the main text you missing pg 39 and 216 and you have two pg 78's. Also the page #'s don't correspond to the Table of Contents, check page #'s on the List of figures also to make sure they are on the correct page. Make these changes and resubmit.

DSpace: Submission Rejected Thu Dec 29, 2005

To collection: Theses and Dissertations (CLOSED)

Your submission has been rejected with the following explanation:

Just one page that needs correction. Fix the widow on pg xiii. Move at least one line over from pg xii. Then resubmit.

The
first of these took SIX HOURS OF WORK. The second took another two
hours. I'm sure the last won't be more than a few minutes. But I feel
that I should take this moment to note that I used the template,
available online on the Graduate School website under instructions for
submitting your dissertation, in order to format this thing. Yes, I had
many hours of extra work tacked on to this process because I, stupidly,
thought that I could use the template provided by the graduate school without having to correct it. I'm not sure what possessed me to think that the graduate school would provide a correct template. Obviously, I wasn't thinking clearly.

18 December 2005

My flight isn't leaving until 3pm, and I have to be out of the room by
11, so I contemplate what to do. I think I thought there might actually
be something to see when I booked the flight (also, I vaguely remember
that the other flight option departed at 6am, which is something I
don't do unless the country I'm in is being bombed), but I now see that
this was wishful thinking. Still, I gotta be out of the room, so I
might as well take a whirl around downtown Orlando, right?

Or
not. It's like a sci-fi book where aliens have invented a weapon that
destroys all animal life but leaves buildings and plants in tact. so
empty and desolate that it reminded me of a really bad 80s movie
whose plot revolved around everyone but a handful of teenagers in LA
either being turned to dust or into zombies by a comet. I half expected
to see elderly zombies wandering the streets with their zombie poodles.
When I got out of the car to take pictures of a (closed up) lunch joint
called the "Lunch Basket" (though I didn't see any baskets involved) I
was the first pedestrian I'd seen all day. Which is just weird.

Actually, let me take that back-- it wasn't weird so much as it was depressing.
It seems so sad when a city becomes an empty shell with everything that
happens happening elsewhere. But then again, I'm not convinced that it
so much became this was, as just is this way. I ended up
downtown not only because I couldn't figure out a better place to go
that would get me back to the airport in time for my flight, but also
because there were signs declaring that Orlando's "Historic District"
was this-a-way. I'm not sure what I was expecting (or if I was even
expecting anything)--- a couple of blocks of Miami? A little bit of St.
Augustine? What I can tell you is that there was no such thing. The
most historic thing I saw on my little jaunt (besides the Lunch Basket,
which looked like it might have been constructed sometime in the 60s)
was a parking garage with a 1970s feel to it.

It was so much of
a bust that I actually headed back to the airport hoping (fruitlessly)
to catch an earlier flight back. At least I figured I had a book...

17 December 2005

My friends Kanika and Paul got married today in Orlando, which is a
hell of lot better reason to go to Orlando than Disney World as far as
I'm concerned. It was an all day affair, beginning at 8:30 in the
morning with the Cambodian ceremony followed by lunch, and then a
church wedding in the early evening followed by dinner, DJ, and
dancing. Lots of fun-- and so nice to see them both.

16 December 2005

Celebration, Florida. I read an article about Celebration in the New Yorker
a few years ago and had felt both drawn and repulsed by the description
of it. Or, perhaps more accurately, I'd been drawn to it because of my
repulsion. (I'd also thought that it might be a really interesting
place to take pictures). I'd then forgotten all about it. When I told a
friend of mine that I was going to Orlando for a wedding his first
reaction had been, "you can go to Celebration!" in a tone of voice that
made me think that he also felt the same sort of curiosity and horror
that I felt about it. And I'd thought, hmmmm.... Celebration.....

Then I forgot about it.

When
I came back from my stroll down International Drive the afternoon I
arrived and realized that there was nothing more that I wanted to see
in walking distance I got out the county map to see if there was
anything interesting in driving distance. And there is was. Celebration. I remembered that New Yorker
article saying something about the town's Christmas light displays and
decided that with the sun starting to go down that it might be the best
direction to head in.

It didn't take long to drive there-- just
a few exits on the highway-- but it was long enough to remind me of all
the reasons I hate driving. When I pulled up to the sign announcing I'd
entered Celebration I took a guess at which direction to head in and
made my way down a long, curving, palm tree-lined road with a string of
condominiums in Late Twentieth Century Resort Style. I turned down
another street and found a strip of houses that seemed to have used a
street in Georgetown as their model. This street curved around a small,
man-made pond with condominuims in Southern California style. Spidering
off the main road were side streets in either direction lined with
single family homes, mansions, or condos that together seemed like a
catalogue of North American architectural styles of the last hundred
and fifty years: Victorians, Arts and Crafts, Italianates, Federalists,
Southern Plantations--- it's all there. Usually right on top of each
other, regardless of temporal or geographic improbability.

The
town was a lot bigger than I thought it was going to be (clearly I'd
underestimated the desirability of Home Town Simulacra). Somehow, after
reading that article I had imagined a contained village. I remembered
it saying that there was a little downtown area that had been created
with the idea of a walkable town with a coherent center. Which I guess
I extrapolated out to mean that Celebration was walkable. But it is no
such thing. The neighborhoods of faux heritage Americana homes sprawl
for miles and miles, with numerous empty lots at the edges, being
prepped for you to have your very own antique rose colored recreated
neo-Gothic with the peaked rood and the wrap-around porch.

Am
I getting ahead of myself? I think I am. Celebration is a planned
community outside of Orlando. But hey, a lot of Florida seems to be
made up of planned (and gated) communities (or so I gathered from what
I saw in Fort Meyers and in Orlando). But this isn't just any planned
community-- it's a community planned by Disney. I think it was
originally designed to be a community for people working for Disney,
but it seems to have morphed into a planned community for anyone who
wants to be part of the, ahem, "Disney magic" all year long. I should
probably note here, in the interest of full disclosure, that it was
clear to me that I was the only person in Celebration who doesn't feel
the "Disney magic." Or, to be more precise, who feels it and thinks it
creepy. Which probably goes a long way towards explaining my reaction
to Celebration.

Actually, I kind of find the name creepy.
What, exactly, are we meant to be Celebrating? Disney? Florida? Having
enough money to afford a piece of Celebration? Perhaps it is the
developers who are celebrating.

I drove around until I find
the downtown. A brick-covered block cuts from the road into town (turn
at the Celebration Community Center!) to the little lake (perfectly
shaped and all man-made, of course) at the center of town. The block is
lined with covered sidewalks in front of an unbroken string of shops
and restaurants, all of which are "cute" and vaguely period-evoking
(with a variety of periods being evoked, just like the houses).
Dickensian shops, whose windows are filled with more or less tastefully
designed novelty Christmas ornaments (no cheap dolphin statues here); a
diner with all the chrome frills; a doll shop whose windows are filled
with porcelain faces.

It is dusk when I find a parking spot
and walk back to the downtown square where I find the blue light
reflecting off a street filled with soap suds. Yes, soap suds. The
block has been fenced off with a white picket fence on wheels bearing a
sign telling all comers that in the winter the street is closed off at
3pm for the festivities. Guess this is part of that Disney "magic": if
you live in a place that never sees snow then they'll cover the street
with soap drifts instead, scheduled conveniently at 3pm, just in time
for parents to walk their kids down to the square after school.
Screaming children slide in the soap and throw fluffy soap balls at
each other. A trio of teenaged boys pushes each other, yanking at the
hoods of each others' sweatshirts in an attempt to drag their friends
into the suds.

I walk down the sidewalk towards the lake where
there stands a 25 foot, perfectly conical Christmas tree lit up with
white lights and red and gold ribbons. Not far away is a concession
stand where an older woman honey roasts nuts and smiles at pedestrians.
Beyond that a large train made to look like a cartoon with three
passenger cars full of small children and their parents idles and then
toots its horn in preparation for driving around downtown Celebration.

As
I walk towards the closed off block of screaming children a man's
voice-- the insincerely excited voice of the man telling you to put on
your seatbelt and enjoy the ride at a theme park-- booms from speakers
perched atop the Victorian-style iron light posts. "Ladies and
Gentlemen! Boys and girls! Get ready for the snow!" The light posts
begin blaring Christmas carols at an indecent decibel, and then the
posts start spitting soap suds. Squeals of delight errupt from the
children, who run to cluster around the light posts. Many of the adults
stand under the spray and take pictures of each other, and then
pictures of their children sliding through the soap. The air is filled
with the un-Christmas-like smell of violets.

When the spray
finally dies down, after what feels like an extraordinarily long time,
the insincere put your seatbelt on for your safety voice returns, this
time hoping that we've all enjoyed this special Celebration display,
and urging us all to resume our shopping experience!

Back down
at the end where I'd left the car parked in front of a real estate
office, a bank of speakers had been set up in front of the little
square with a moss-covered tree at each corner and a fountain in the
middle. The teenaged boys were all laying in the soap making soap
angels nearby. In front fo the speakers a temporary parquet floor
marked a "stage." To one side stood several young girls in red
costumes, stretching and giggling and performing mini-dance routines,
ostensibly for each other, but really for anyone who will watch-- the
parents and grandparents milling around, the boys making soap angels,
the tourists enjoying their shopping experience. Several mothers stood
off to the side with the dance instructor, and as a group divided into
an overweight and blond half and an underweight and blond half began a
routine set to Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots Are Made for Walking" (and
which was all out of sync), all I could think of was the woman in
Donnie Darko with the thing for the child molester who managed the
"Sparkle Motion" dance troupe.

I decided it was time to high-tail it out of there.

There
are just so many levels of analysis ther could take place here. The
creation of a simulacra community by the ultimate simulacra machine--
it seems so overloaded that Baudrillard would probably find it passe. I
find these descriptions on their website
creepy: "A vibrant downtown area where friends and neighbors meet." and
"Overall, the look and feel of a warm and friendly hometown." First of
all, the "vibrant downtown area" is a consumer experience (continue
enjoying your shopping experience!), and it one designed to attract
people who are definitely not your neighbors. The shops are not shops
sustainable in a small community-- how many porcelain faced dolls can
one community absorb?-- but are there for the tourists who stay at the
nearby hotel. But the fact that the "vibrant" downtown is made vibrant
by people who are not your neighbors is okay, because this is a place
whose main purpose is to give the "look and feel of a warm and friendly
hometown," not be one. This place gives me the willies.

Friends of mine-- that I met when they met each other-- are getting
married tomorrow, so I've come to Orlando for their wedding. Orlando!
Someplace I hadn't been since I was 11, and all I remember about it was
Disney World. A new place-- always interesting, right?

Or not so
much. Or maybe I needed to be in a different mindset to really
appreciate it for what it is. Hmmmm... no, not really. It is what it
is. I just kind of wish it had been warmer and sunnier-- I mean, I can
get chilly, dreary, drizzly weather back in DC! I kinda feel like a
place that bills itself as the frigging Sunshine State should be, like,
sunny.

But it isn't. What it is, well, at least on
International Drive, where I was staying, is a low-rent vacation strip
devoted to family-safe hedonism. Hotels, mini-golf, rides, shows, and a
whole lotta unhealthy food in large quantities being consumed by large
people. Lots and lots of souvenir shops selling thin, brightly colored,
cheesy t-shirts with "Orlando!" emblazoned across them and plastic
statues of dolphins leaping out of the water with "Florida" written in
glitter on the base. What it reminded me most of all was the
chintziness and shoddiness and slapdashedness of the low-rent parts of
beach towns in Southeast Asia that live off of backpackers. It was like
Pataya if it had been Vegas-scrubbed (ie replace the nudie bars with
"family fun").

There is something just downright melancholic
about vacation spots in the off-season. While I know that many of these
places probably make a bundle when families with kids descend on the
place in the summertime, it's just depressing watching the dozen
employees of the multi-level go-kart track eating potato chips and
smoking Newport 120s out of sheer boredom. International Drive is lined
with chain eateries-- including several that you've probably forgotten
existed (like Ponderosa)-- and, with the exception of McDonalds (which
has a sign declaring its several story tall hamstertrailforkids to be
the largest McDonalds playground in the world), every one of them
offers an all-you-can-eat buffet. They all seem designed to hold crowds
of at least 200 bottomless pit eaters, ready for the Sizzler
all-you-can-eat shrimp plate and buffet, though there were only a few
families in each of them.

Contributing to the Scrubbed Pataya
feel was that most of groups of young men, families, and couples who
were wandering around the hotel, or coming in and out of the Ponderosa
across the street (or jumping in front of me in line at the Starbucks,
thank you very much) were the dreaded Brits on Holiday. I guess
I get why the families were there, but what was up with the quads of
young football hooligan types? I just don't see the overlap between
getting shalacked at a Liverpool FC match and ending up in a brawl that
breaks your nose for the fifth time and the "It's a Small World" ride.
Though, the prevalence of Brits on Holiday in Orlando (a prevalence
pronounced enough that one of the only eating establishments on the
many miles of that strip that was not a chain restaurant was an
"Authentic English Pub," with football on multiple screens and warm
beer on tap) did explain a fair amount about some of the more
outlandish questions/stereoptypes/perceptions that I've run into about
the US from a wide variety of Brits working and on holiday, in UK and
abroad.